


Trilogy

by Dragonsquill (dragonsquill)



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Incest, M/M, Thor: Ragnarok (2017), no incest taboo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2019-05-13 13:18:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14749607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonsquill/pseuds/Dragonsquill
Summary: Thor and Loki have always been tangled together: as brothers, as friends, and eventually as enemies. But perhaps most powerfully, they have been lovers.Their first time was exhilarating and wild and messy and more than a little ridiculous, but only in the best way.Their last was quick, and harsh, and unfulfilled.In the wake of Ragnarok, they have a chance to start again.





	Trilogy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ShabbyFics (Chillmorte)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chillmorte/gifts).



> This is entirely my lovely Shabby's fault. <3 This story uses the lore as established in the _Thor_ films.

The first time was exhilarating and wild and messy and more than a little ridiculous, but only in the best way.

It started, of course, with competition - sparring along one of the mountainsides, Thor’s steady strength versus Loki’s wiry speed. They were as much boys as men, of a height but their bodies sharpening in completely different and fascinating ways. Loki had only recently truly accepted this fighting style, so different from their father’s, but he took to it quickly, and relished the sudden reversal in fortune in his fights with Thor. Where once he bent under blows, now he avoided them with all the speed of shadow, leaving nicks and streaks of blood in his wake. Thor, too, loved this new uncertainty, no longer guaranteed a win but instead every bout became a challenge and a question.

They were slick with sweat and Loki was laughing as a stripe of red blossomed on Thor’s arms. His laugh was sharp, but not mocking, and Thor’s response was a wide grin that lacked the arrogance that would shape him in years to come. 

“Well played, brother!” Thor roared over the spray of the sea and an ominous roll of thunder. They had no realms yet, though their powers and personalities were forming with speed. Loki laughed again, fair cheeks flushed, his hair a tangle of salt and wind around his narrow face. 

“And not at all well played by you!” he shot back, smug and confident until he stepped wrong and slipped, cursing as he fell backward not at the mercy of his brother, but his own inexperience. 

He landed with a splash and a growled curse that managed to be in three languages at once. Thor positively beamed at him and Loki rolled his eyes, but he took the hand when it was offered, and lazily allowed Thor to pull him to his feet. “Perhaps you need more dancing lessons,” Thor offered with a knowing grin. 

“A fine suggestion from a man who can barely stay on two feet standing still,” Loki shot back, but there was laughter in his voice instead of malice, and he did not release the hand in his. Nor, he noticed, did Thor pull away. Instead, his brother stepped closer, his free hand rising to cup the back of Loki’s neck in a familiar gesture of boundless affection.

There had been a time they had felt almost identical, but Thor’s hand engulfed his now, and the calluses didn’t match, and something crackled in the threatening storm that made them, in a moment, of one mind. Their eyes met, and Thor’s crinkled at the edges with his smile as Loki’s narrowed into mischievous slits. 

They would never reach a consensus on who moved first. Loki would claim he twisted free the straps of Thor’s leather cuirass, while Thor would insist he stripped away Loki’s light cape. In the end - in the centuries that followed - it would never truly matter, beyond being cause for friendly debate.

They didn’t make it indoors, as such. There was a small pavilion that served well enough; their own fascination and sense of invulnerability making up for the lack of soft beds and cool sheets. Leather armor and fine cloth were stripped away with hands much too steady given neither had done this before; they shared all other firsts, and saw no reason to be afraid now. 

It was the differences that fascinated them. Loki ran clever fingers over broadening muscle, tracing pectorals and trailing manicured nails along abdominals beginning to shift into the shape of marble statues. He grinned as skin flicked under his touch, and tucked away the sound of Thor’s soft, astonished little pants of surprise when Loki dug in a bit at the thickening shape of Thor’s waist, trailed nails over his thighs.

Thor was no less enthralled with the hard plane of Loki’s stomach, fair skin over compact muscle that favored speed over strength. He was not so blind as to have missed the sharpening of his brother’s features, the beautiful glint of his eyes, the ink of his hair - in a world of bearded warriors in chainmail and furs, Loki was growing into brilliance and leather. 

It was Thor who kissed Loki first.

They were bare already, clothes tossed aside, armor only nominally more cared for; there would be lectures that evening, when they came home flushed and drenched, acting as if nothing had changed in those wild, playful moments under the storm clouds. Thor let his hands slide around Loki’s waist - so much narrower, so much more flexible than his own - and slide to the small of his back and the swell of his buttocks, and then he pulled, an easy half-lift, and swallowed Loki’s annoyed chastisement for the liberty with his own lips.

If asked, Loki would have denied it, but his arms flew to Thor’s shoulders, and he tilted his head, taking control of the kiss with a nip of his teeth and the slide of his tongue. This was not new, not even between them, several years of surreptitious practice in the dark having taught each a few tricks. But the slide of damp skin, the contrast of width and strength, and -

They certainly shared the first moan as their cocks, half-hard from the fight and thickening with desire, slid together. 

“Brother,” Thor whispered, something awed on his voice that spoke to Loki’s ego even as his own hips began moving of their own volition. 

“Yes,” he agreed. “Your brother,” and somehow that made Thor positively growl into Loki’s mouth, his hands tightening on Loki’s ass. His fingers slid, unknown, just between, and Loki shivered.

His own fingers were long and thin. He had wondered if Thor’s-

But there was no time, they were too young and it was all too sudden, as Thor found one of the pillars at his back and a long leg tucked against his side as Loki - all hidden strength and power - thrust against him with graceful intent. 

“Gorgeous,” he breathed into Loki’s hair, and Loki laughed like a wild thing, bit at Thor’s shoulder and tried to tease, but the words melted on his tongue as he came with a sudden, full-body shudder.

Thor had never felt another person’s pleasure before, but it sparked across Loki’s body, twisted along his fingers in a dance of seder and teased Thor’s skin. Overwhelmed with embarrassing speed, Thor’s release came on a crash of thunder, the pounding of rain on the roof, and his eyes pressed into his brother’s lovely neck. 

The rain soaked them both as their bodies calmed, suddenly and unexpectedly sensitive. Thor stole kisses and Loki licked at Thor’s smile and when their eyes met they both looked inordinately pleased with themselves.

“We must do this again,” Thor said, his hands stroking along the sharper curve of his brother’s spine.

Loki licked his lips, and there was a purr wholly new to them both when he answered, “Oh yes. Soon. And frequently. Farbeit for the sons of Odin, the great princes of Asgard, to have insufficient skills in the arts of fucking.”

The word bit in the silver of Loki’s tongue, and Thor shuddered at the heady vulgarity of it, even as he tilted his brother’s head and kissed him, slow and pleased. “I look forward to the practice,” he promised.

Loki hummed agreement, made as if to move away - and reached down to wrap his hand around Thor’s cock with a slow smile that promised a new competition to be completed before they returned to the palace. 

\----Second----

The last time was quick, and harsh, and unfulfilled.

Again, it came in the wake of a fight. Nominally it was a friendly competition, sparring among friends, but the centuries had shaped more than their bodies. Thor’s confidence stung of arrogance, and Loki’s urge to please had become desperate jealousy. They had been set against each other by the father who professed to love them, and Loki, for reasons that slipped through his fingers, had been found wanting each step of the way.

And Thor, though he did not know it, had learned the bite of disrespect from their father. 

With the assumption of Mjolnir, the balance of power had shifted between them. Surrounded by friends, beloved by all, and with Asgard’s greatest weapon at his command, Thor’s might made Loki’s skills look like tricks - and he knew it. On this day, the sparring had involved more than the two of them, and as their friends watched, Thor teased his brother with lightning and thunder and constant shocks that kept Loki from the focus necessary to use skills born of training and study over instinct.

Loki had learned long before to hide his anger behind his realm, to seem as confident as Thor or Odin. He did not let anyone know how his position as the less favored son tore at him; he certainly wasn’t going to allow these fools to see his hurt and anger at being so mocked before them. So he laughed, sharp and wicked, as if enjoying the game and plotting his revenge instead of burning with humiliation at being so easily bested.

They came in late, slick with sweat from the Asgardian summer. Thor was laughing, clapping each of their friends on the shoulder as they parted ways. He and Loki, their quarters connected through the royal wing, continued together. As they walked, Thor recounted the days’ successes on the field, chuckling at the remembered image of Loki at the mercy of Thor’s lightning. 

“Did it excite you, brother?” he teased as he trailed on Loki’s heels into Loki’s own rooms. “I know how lightning can affect you.” He reached out, grinning, and grabbed Loki’s slender wrist in his own broad palm, neatly turning his brother toward him. 

Loki didn’t pull away, but nor did he lift his arms as Thor pulled him against his chest. “At least you’re pleased,” he said neutrally. His body did react to Thor’s closeness, his heat, the smell of him. They had each had their share of partners over the years, but they always gravitated back to each other. 

Thor smiled at him, broad and arrogant, only slightly softened by the joy and kindness of that young warrior on the mountainside. “Come now, I know you can take a bit of teasing,” he said, his other hand pressing to Loki’s back and pushing just enough to press them closely together. He leaned in, stealing a kiss that took Loki’s breath away - they knew each other well, intimately, their bodies synchronized in a way their souls had lost. Only days before, they had spent an hour in Thor’s bed, the sex rough and powerful, and already he felt Thor hardening against his hip. He kissed back out of instinctual pleasure, but the knot in his belly didn’t unfurl.

“Teasing,” Loki said, his voice like silk as Thor pulled away, a swipe of tongue along Loki’s bottom lip. “You call it teasing, to ceaselessly humiliate me in front of your precious friends?”

Thor’s expression darkened. “They’re our friends, and you have never held back from using your skills on me, when the situation calls for it.”

Loki laughed, a harsh little bark of sound with no humor in it. He did not deny the assertion that he used magic on Thor as freely as Thor used his intrinsic power on Loki, nor did he accept the parallel. He was the hurt party here, at least in his own eyes. What could a beloved son know of being the one tossed aside? How could Thor, with his power born into his fingers, understand the hours of study Loki used to control his own unfocused gifts? “They are no friends of mine. They tolerate my presence because you would have it so.”

Confusion clouded the proud features, genuine. “Have they done something to earn such dismissal from your affections? Is there aught I should know? If any one of them has harmed you-” Thor tensed, something protective in his stance, and for a moment Loki leaned into it. 

Then he thought of lightning along his nerves, the jerk and fall, and their raucous laughter. His mouth twisted into a mockery of a smile. Once, he had fooled himself into believing their friends - Thor’s friends - laughed with him, but as they surrounded him, his fingers jolting with the little bursts of electricity and his knives clattering to his feet, he had accepted the truth. 

Like his father, they saw him only as Thor’s lesser brother, the unneeded spare.

“Are you truly so blind to your own faults that you can’t see you are the one who encourages them to believe I am the court jester, rather than your brother and fellow prince?” They were pressed together intimately, Thor’s hand a lock at Loki’s waist, but every muscle was tense. 

Thor scowled at him, petulant. “You are aware of my regard for you,” he said, a note of warning in his voice. “You would do well not to test it.” His hand tightened at the small of Loki’s back and the other wrapped around the curve of Loki’s neck in a mockery of the usual fond gesture, too tight. “Many have been the days when I have landed in the mud at the ends of your daggers, with an audience to laugh at my fall.”

For an instant, Loki was pinned, and something spiked in his chest that must have been fear, though he would refuse to name it as such. He was fast and clever, but the fight had fatigued him, and he had wasted his energy on magic that wouldn’t quite obey him with the strange combination of pleasure and discomfort that came from Thor’s lightning dancing along his nerves. 

_I know how lightning can affect you,_ Thor had said, and Loki’s eyes narrowed even as his cheeks flushed red. 

There was knowledge that, despite having their own lovers as they pleased, had always been kept between them. That Loki had been the first man to press inside Thor’s body, making him writhe and beg for more, was not spoken of outside their bedrooms; that while the opposite was not true, Thor had been the first to take Loki to bed as he explored his female form, bringing her off with fingers and tongue before filling her; that Loki had helped Thor control his lightning as it came to him, and that there were times when that power had tangled itself in their sexplay - these were intimate details, held in shared confidence.

And Thor had just _demonstrated_ one of them to his _friends._

Surely this was a greater betrayal than mere mockery.

Even as Loki stiffened in his embrace, Thor kissed him, confident in his ability to calm the skittish god in his arms. “Come now,” he said soothingly, “we always forgive each other. You know you are my dearest companion.” The hand on Loki’s neck gentled, the anger flickering away as it always did. “Come to bed, and I will make amends for my wrongdoing. You are wild and beautiful this eve, and I would show my appreciation.”

Loki’s anger, not so quick to flare, burned passionately. 

“You think,” he said, his voice flat and icy, a tone enemies had learned to fear, “that you can mock me in public and lay me in private, and I will simply spread my legs for you on command?”

Thor blinked, surprised. There had been a time they read each other effortlessly. That time was long lost in the intervening centuries. “I...would not be adverse to spreading my legs for you,” he offered, as if in consolation, a hint of mischief in his smile that disappeared abruptly as a dagger, sharp as only magic could make it, appeared at his neck. 

“You will take your hands off me,” Loki told him, his voice deadly, his heart aching.

“Loki-!”

Thor’s adam’s apple moved against the blade, and a thin trickle of blood slid along the metal. 

It was his turn to be afraid.

“You can’t be serious.”

“I am not your plaything,” Loki told him. “I am not your bedmate of convenience, or your fool. I am a prince of Asgard, and I will slice your vocal cords if you do not take your hands off me.” He smiled, harsh and cold. “See what they think, when you have no words to mock me with.”

Thor released him, the handsome features twisting into an offended scowl, memories of daggers sliding into his sides and scraping his skin sharp in his mind. “I would not harm you,” he said in justification. “Not in any way that matters.” 

Loki’s hand remained steady. “Once, I would have believed you.”

“Once,” Thor snapped back, “you had a sense of humor.”

Loki turned, and the blade bit again, a warning, a welling of blood, expertly short of doing any real damage. He was breathing hard, and he could all but hear the pounding of Thor’s heart. “Once, you were not an arrogant child using any means to gain love and admiration from unimportant soldiers.”

“Loki-!” Thor began, offended, his hand rising to press to the wound on his neck.

Loki stopped in the doorway and looked over his shoulder. “You will not touch me again, Thor Odinson. May you find new toys to play with.” 

The words hurt.

Neither could say which they hurt more.

\---Third---

The first time is . . . different.

They stand in a room on a stolen ship, battered and beaten, but whole. Both whole, in a way they haven’t been in a very long time; or at least as much as each can be, after the events of the last decade.

They have changed more in ten short years than in the previous eight centuries: the laughing, erotic princes of their youth have grown into a villain and a king.

Loki stands frozen, hand lifted and an ancient smile on his face. There’s humor there, and softness. Thor’s blue eyes flicker from the glass in Loki’s hand to his face, and he lights up like he did when they were children, thrilled at the unexpected. 

Thor always did like surprises.

The promise hangs between them: _I might even give you a hug_ , and Loki’s silent answer: _I might accept it._

Thor thinks of blood on his throat and his brother dying in his arms, of their murdered mother and their foolish father, and he crosses the space between them in two long steps. 

They _fit_.

The centuries since they last truly held each other have added bulk to Thor’s frame and stolen the same from Loki’s, but in that instant they are boys again, slotting perfectly against each other as Loki spins bedtime tails and Thor chases away the demons that come in nightmares. Loki doesn’t hesitate, almost melting into Thor’s embrace, and Thor feels the joy of it as a catch in his throat. 

“Brother,” he whispers, and the soft huff of a laugh is more real than all the wild laughter Loki has hidden behind since his fall from grace.

“Yes,” Loki agrees, and the admission is freeing, “your brother.” 

Odin’s lies never truly took that way, no matter how they might each have wished it so.

This time, it is Loki who kisses Thor first. It’s only a gentle brush of his lips across Thor’s jaw, something that could almost be dismissed as an accident, if it must be. But Thor doesn’t demand the lie. Instead, he leans back, one hand rising to curl with infinite care around the side of Loki’s neck. It’s a question that never had to be asked before, but Thor isn’t sure of his welcome, nor of the wisdom in asking. He is a king now, and his brother a traitor to the throne. 

But that throne was destroyed as an entire world fell to ruin and they watched from the safety of Loki’s stolen ship. 

Loki meets his eyes, then nods, barely perceptively.

They kiss each other. 

It is soft and tender and aching, far from those first awkward kisses as gangly youths, or the hard, demanding ones shared over centuries. It is neither mocking nor painful, but only-

They part, breath shared between them, and it is Loki who breaks the silence in a voice rich with regret. “This is not wise.”

Thor rests his forehead against his brother’s. He doesn’t speak for a moment, only rubs a thumb with infinite gentleness along Loki’s jaw. He has tried to be wise in the past when it came to this man. He had dismissed Loki’s madness as nothing more than his brother’s nature. He’d told himself he had abandoned all hope of Loki’s redemption in the wake of their mother’s death, only to see Loki die to save him. 

He had abandoned him as lost when he fell into the abyss, and been faced with those eyes, hollow and broken, as they waged war above New York City.

“I do not seek wisdom in this,” Thor admits to them both. “I have tried to use reason when it comes to you, and in doing so, I made mistakes which can never be rectified.”

Loki laughs, but the sound is more broken glass than humor. “You, brother? Of the two of us, I believe I hold the record for mistakes which guarantee damnation.” There is hatred in her voice, but now it is directly only at himself. 

Thor kisses him then, urgently, a million apologies spilling wordlessly from his lips to his brother’s. 

_I’m sorry, I’m sorry,_ Loki had said as he died. _I did not do it for him._

“I would battle Urðr herself for the fate she granted you,” Thor swears, “but I have only myself to blame for my own role in it.”

Loki pulls back enough to stare at him. Never in their long lives has Thor properly been taken to task, not by their parents and certainly not by Thor himself. He parts his lips to speak, but the silver of his tongue fails him, and he only frowns in confusion.

Thor chuckles softly. He deserves this incredulity, the beloved golden son of Odin. “I can not absolve you of your mistakes, brother, but I can offer you the acknowledgement of my own. I did not try to understand when first you changed so. I did not seek you out when you fell away from me into the void. Even when I learned the truth, I did not take our father to task for his treatment of you.” He takes a slow breath and gives voice to his sharpest regret. “I did not come to you myself when our mother died. You deserved better of me.”

“And you,” Loki says softly, “of me.”

He does not delineate his sins: his jealousy, his madness, his desperation, his breaking at the hands of Thanos, his betrayals. He doesn’t need to. His mistakes have never been secrets.

Gentle fingers card through Loki’s hair, and he tilts his head into the touch. It has been so long since he was touched in kindness, so long since he was touched in love. He has forgotten the ache of it.

“So do not speak to me of wisdom,” Thor continues. “The mind may be wise, but the heart has its own secrets. And mine, Loki, has longed for you in my arms since the moment you left them.”

There are words left unsaid, and decisions that must be made, and a wealth of pain that lies in the silence between them, but there is, too, that ancient understanding returned to them. 

I know you. 

They could be interrupted at any moment, but the knowledge of this does nothing to hurry them. Armor is removed with care, and bare skin revealed with something that borders on reverence. There are new scars here, strange and unfamiliar. Loki traces the few fresh marks Thor carries with such concentration that it is clear he doesn’t wish to think of what Thor is seeing. 

What Thor does see makes him ache with regret. He had considered, once or twice, what Thanos had done to his brother to turn him so completely against Midgard, and to bring that flash of intense terror he had seen in Loki’s eyes above New York, but Thor has never experienced torture. He had no frame of reference. He’d assumed, to his shame, that the visual signs would be few. He was wrong.

Skin once completely unblemished is striped and twisted with vestiges of pain. There are signs of lashes, skin stripped away in a patternless criss cross. Low on Loki’s belly is a spiderweb of skin even paler than the rest. There are signs of burns, deep slices of skin that grew back together, and he feels the strange texture of skin along Loki’s spine that he cannot imagine the source of. 

In that moment, Thor is humbled beyond words.

Loki is letting him see the truth.

“You are beautiful,” he says with broken honesty, and Loki almost believes him. 

There is a bed, and proper, soft sheets, and a pile of pillows. The Grandmaster would have no less in his ship, no matter what its function. Loki lays Thor out among those pillows, slides atop him. There is no rush, slow kisses and soft exhalations that could be words: I’m here, don’t go, Thor, Loki, brother, mine.

Loki explores this changed Thor with fingers and lips, the occasional flash of teeth. Rough hands tangle in his hair and caress his neck as he tastes the dip of his brother’s hip,too trim for Loki’s liking, a scar along his thigh. It takes a great deal to scar a god, but Thor’s body wears them like badges of honor and protection. He earned them protecting people, not by failing to kill himself in an endless void. Loki would take Thor in his mouth, tease him to climax, share a few tricks he learned to survive and curry favor, but that can wait for another time. Now he needs-

Their positions gradually reverse, and the weight of Thor above him feels incredibly safe, for all that they betrayed each other only the day before, a battle of play and wits more than of hostility. _How dare you think you could tuck me away on that planet and forget me. How dare you believe that’s what I truly wanted._

He cradles Thor’s face in his hands and smiles into the next kiss. “You are quite handsome like this,” he says, because it’s true and because Thor, even stronger and more centered as he is, must have mourned the loss of his proud mane of hair. But Loki likes this new Thor, and Thor hums an almost shy murmur of pleasure at the compliment. 

Later, Thor will trace all those new scars and worship everything they represent. Later, he will wonder if they were needed to bring them here, and know that it will never be worth it, no matter how much his heart and Loki’s beat together. Later, he will beg forgiveness with his touch and have it granted, as much as it can be, though Loki’s strokes along his back as he falls asleep will never be enough to make him forgive himself.

Now, Loki hardens against his tongue, scratches at his shorn hair, and moves his hips in loving invitation as Thor spreads him open. Loki is usually demanding in his desires, luxuriating in the chance to order Thor to his whims, but tonight there are no words. In the bright light of artificial day, he pulls Thor up, and kisses him, and whispers only a soft _ah_ as his brother presses into his body. 

He is limber and smiling as Thor moves. Thor cannot bring himself to pull away, feels something absolutely joyful and tender bubbling in his chest as his mercurial Loki’s eyes remain fixed on his, as he thrusts deep and rocks with a firm gentleness that moves the god of mischief against the pillows. 

The scent of sex fills the air, the soft slide of lubricant, hard little breaths that tremble between them every time Thor twists his hips and loses himself in the heat and pleasure of this beloved man. 

Thor should be too tired for any of this, but Loki is perfection in his arms, and his hips move faster, little snaps that draw a sweet, low moan from his brother’s lips. Loki is hard between their bellies, and he feels the brush of knuckles as Loki strokes himself. He would shift to take over, but his forearms are tucked to his lover’s side and Loki is watching him and he is loathe to move. Then Loki smiles at him, new and gentle and tender and still, underneath it all, playful, and he digs in those sharp nails along Thor’s ribs and whispers, “Come for me,” and Thor is undone. 

He shudders into his climax, and electricity dances along his fingertips, lights his eyes. He can’t control it, nor does he try - he feels the response in Loki’s body, hears the low growl of pleasure and demand as his brother’s skin glows with the power of it. Ice crackles in the air, and Thor wonders how he never recognized it properly before. Surely it had been there, Loki’s inborn power that he works so hard to ignore. 

With Loki, he does not have to hide his power, tightly control it. His brother arches into it, demands more, and comes in hot-cold bursts between them as Thor’s vision crackles white and blue. 

And this time, the truth between them, frost slips from Loki’s lips and stings Thor’s tongue as Loki shudders around him and Thor pulses within his brother’s body.

Thor comes properly back to himself in Loki’s arms, the mess magically whisked away thanks to his brother’s powers and fastidious nature. Even the sheets are tucked over them, and Thor hides his grin in Loki’s shoulder, but can’t stop his shoulders from shaking with fond laughter.

“And what is so amusing about this particular orgasm?” Loki asks, trying to sound arch, but his hands are petting Thor’s shoulders and the bigger man feels like a large and extremely contented cat.

“It is only joy,” Thor admits without hesitation, “that you are here, and you are you.”

Loki is silent a moment, so still that it seems he is no longer breathing. Then his pale chest moves, and he says, “I am not who I was.”

“No,” Thor agreed. “Nor am I. Were we so, we would not be here now, together.”

“Together.” Loki tastes the word, lets it tremble in the air. “For how long? The people-”

Thor lifts up and kisses him, Loki’s lips still cool and strangely sweet. He wonders if Loki’s understanding of his own nature has altered him; he would not be surprised to know that his brother’s brilliant mind held such power over his body. “Not now,” he urges. “Not now, Loki. We have lived so long in the past, let us have this moment in the present.”

Loki’s mouth curves into the smile Thor saw, for only a moment, in the cell below Asgard. He touches Thor’s temple with calloused fingers. “But the present is so fleeting. We must move into the future, brother.”

“Not now,” Thor says again, and he feels the acquiescence in Loki’s body, the curve of spine and relaxation of muscle as Loki softens and allows Thor to settle again in his arms, his bearded cheek tucked against one fair shoulder. “Let me just have you for now. Let you just have me.”

“For now,” the god of mischief murmurs, and presses a kiss to the king’s rough shorn hair.


End file.
